Fichte on Cognition, Knowledge, and Epistemic Value

AHRC: Alexander Hutterer: AH/ r012709 /1当今的社会和技术面临着一些信息处理方面的挑战。人类生活与数字技术的联系越来越紧密。因此，我们需要更好地理解我们自己的信息处理实践。我们需要更有效地利用技术来辅助和补充我们的信息处理活动。哲学在解释最基本概念的意义方面起着关键作用。具体来说，认识论的子学科旨在帮助我们理解当我们说“相信”、“知道”或“理解”某事时，我们的意思是什么。这既可以帮助我们更好地理解当代社会技术挑战，也可以帮助我们找到解决方案。例如，人工智能发展的一个主要挑战是使其对人类“可理解”。这首先需要清楚地了解人类理解事物的意义。另一个例子是通过社交媒体传播“假新闻”。目前针对这一问题的解决方案，如事实核查，是不够的。这种特殊解决方案的部分问题在于其隐含的目标过于雄心勃勃，即“证明事实”，这是一个即使是科学也不一定能达到的目标。通过更好地理解这些认知目标和实践，哲学可以帮助开发新的、更有效的解决方案，以应对“后真相”问题或人工智能发展等挑战。人们常常认为，当今以科学为动力的社会的价值观和实践源于启蒙运动时期。启蒙运动发生在17世纪和18世纪，与人类生活的重大改善相吻合，包括科学的发展和工业革命的开始。正是在这一时期的后期，伊曼努尔·康德写出了开创性的《纯粹理性批判》。在关于这本书的英语二手文献中，康德通常被理解为提供了一种新的理论，说明人类如何以及什么样的“先验知识”，即先于经验的知识。然而，最近几篇关于康德学术的论文对这一主流解释提出了质疑。相反，有人认为，康德根本不是在谈论知识。具体来说，他说的是德语术语“Erkenntnis”，而不是知识。“Erkenntnis”一词没有明确的翻译。我攻读博士学位的部分目的是要弄清楚康德所说的“Erkenntnis”究竟是什么意思。如果“Erkenntnis”真的与“知识”根本不同，这将从根本上影响康德学术。此外，其含义超出了康德训诂的狭隘范围。准确地说，康德和他的同时代人似乎使用了一个完全不同的认知范畴，即“Erkenntnis”，除了今天哲学中使用的范畴之外。此外，由于康德认为“Erkenntnis”在哲学上比“知识”更重要，而“知识”是当代认识论的中心，他很可能对我们的认识论实践的目的也有不同的概念。在拟议的安置中，我的目标是找出康德的直接智力继承者——哲学家约翰·戈特利布·费希特——是否以类似于康德的方式将“Erkenntnis”与知识区分开来。此外，我打算找出费希特关于认识论目的的思想与康德的不同之处。最后，我想探讨费希特关于这一主题的思想如何应用于当代哲学和当今社会的一些信息处理挑战。因此，该项目将有助于更好地理解为什么知识、真理和其他认知实践是有价值的，以及我们如何促进这些价值观。此外，这将有助于填补德国理想主义研究的一个重要空白。

AHRC : Alexander Hutterer : AH/R012709/1Society and technology today face several information processing challenges. Human lives and digital technology become ever closer intertwined. Hence, we need to become better at understanding our own information processing practices. And we need to become more effective at using technology to aid and supplement our information processing activities. Philosophy plays a key role in explicating the meaning of the most fundamental concepts. Specifically, the sub-discipline of epistemology aims to help us understand what we mean when we say that we "believe," "know," or "understand" something. This can help us both with better understanding our contemporary socio-technological challenges and with finding solutions for them. For instance, one major challenge in the development of artificial intelligence is making it "understandable" to humans. This requires a clear picture of what it means for humans to understand something in the first place. Another example is the spreading of "fake news" via social media. Current solutions for this problem, like fact-checking, are insufficient. Part of the problem with this particular solution is that the implied aim is too ambitious, namely to "prove facts," a goal that even science does not necessarily reach. By better understanding these epistemic aims and practices, philosophy can help with the development of new, more effective solutions to challenges like the "post-truth" problem or AI development.The values and practices of today's science-powered society are frequently thought to stem from the enlightenment period. The enlightenment took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and coincided with significant improvements of human life, including the ascent of science and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. It was in the later stages of this period that Immanuel Kant wrote his ground-breaking "Critique of Pure Reason." In anglophone secondary literature on this book, Kant is usually understood as providing a new theory of how and what sort of "a priori knowledge," i.e., knowledge before experience, is attainable for humans. However, several recent papers in Kant scholarship cast doubt on this dominant interpretation. Instead, it is argued, Kant was not talking about knowledge at all. Specifically, he was talking about the German term "Erkenntnis" rather than knowledge. There is no clear translation for the term "Erkenntnis." The goal of my PhD is partly to figure out what precisely Kant meant by "Erkenntnis." If "Erkenntnis" really differs radically from "knowledge," this would radically affect Kant scholarship. Moreover, the implications go beyond the narrow confines of Kant exegesis. To be precise, Kant and his contemporaries seem to have used an entirely different epistemic category, namely "Erkenntnis," in addition to the categories used in philosophy today. Moreover, since Kant deemed "Erkenntnis" to be philosophically more significant than "knowledge," which is at the centre of contemporary epistemology, he quite probably also had different conceptions of the aims of our epistemic practices.During the proposed placement, I aim to find out whether Kant's immediate intellectual successor - the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte - distinguished "Erkenntnis" from knowledge in an analogous way to Kant. Moreover, I intend to find out how Fichte's thoughts about the aims of epistemology differ from Kant's. Finally, I want to explore how Fichte's thoughts on this topic could be applied to both contemporary philosophy and some of society's current information processing challenges. The project will thereby contribute to a better understanding of why knowledge, truth and other epistemic practices are valuable and how we can promote these values. Moreover, it will contribute to filling a crucial gap in research on German Idealism.